(Male, 30’s) I can’t remember the whole dream but after that ending, I woke up feeling quite shook up. The whole dream seemed to be about some kind of research project that had escaped and we were first of all, trying to find it and then second trying to destroy it before it killed all of us. The military was involved, probably in the “killing it before it killed us” part. The dream was a long, grueling exercise focused on brute survival mostly. The corridors we ran down were dark and narrow and made of cement. Finally, we heard something beneath us, moving underneath the cement floor. We cut a hole through the cement which was probably a good foot thick and found the soil underneath had eroded away. Probably 20 feet down were the shiny black tentacles of the monster we’d created. We’d found it. But just then the military guys started shooting the scientists, like it less important to destroy the monster and was more important to make sure that word of the monster didn’t get out. I was the last one to be killed. I didn’t want to beg; I didn’t know what kind of argument I could make for my life. I put my finger to the side of my head like I was miming shooting myself. That’s when I woke up.
Tag: monsters
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Nightmare #24 – The Sadistic Make-over
(Female, 40’s) My oldest, most disturbing nightmare
There are three characters in this dream. There is a little girl of 3 or 4, who is sitting in her highchair at a dining room table. There is the mother, who is in the bathroom out of sight, getting ready to go somewhere; the mother never appears in the dream but she talks to her little girl while she is putting on her makeup and doing her hair. There is also the invisible Monster. He is sitting at the table. The mother doesn’t know he’s there. My perspective shifted back and forth in the dream. Sometimes I was the little girl; sometimes I was the audience watching the scene.
The Monster sits at the table, next to the little girl, and he has a toolbox. She knows he’s there, of course. She can see him. He whispers to the girl and only she can hear his voice. He asks, “Do you want me to make you pretty so you can surprise Mommy?” The little girl nods enthusiastically.
The Monster opens the toolbox, which is full of sharp things: scissors, knives, razor blades, pieces of metal, broken glass. He takes the scissors and chops her hair off all raggedy, all over her head. Then the Monster picks up a big piece of broken glass and jabs it slowly and purposefully deep into the girl’s arm. He leaves it sticking out, and blood begins to drizzle down her skin. He admires his work. Next he takes 10 small squares of metal and slowly pushes one under each of her fingernails. He uses each of his tools to poke and cut her face and arms, and she bleeds from her fingers and arms and cheeks. The box is full of things to hurt and torture her with, but he keeps telling her how pretty she looks.
In the last scene of the dream, the Monster tells the little girl that they are finished and asks if she is ready to surprise Mommy. He lifts the bloodied little girl out of her highchair and sets her on the ground. She toddles off to show her mother, saying “Mommy, mommy, look at me!”
And then the mother screams a long, loud, horrified scream.
I had this nightmare a long time ago, when I was a kid, maybe 9 or 10. It scared me terribly when I had it, and it scares me to think of it still. The thought that nightmares are stories that come from somewhere inside one’s head really doesn’t comfort me. I can’t figure how I came up with this.
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Nightmare #18 – Box Cutter Monsters
(Male, early 40’s) This nightmare sounds almost funny when I write it down but it wasn’t at the time. I had this dream around the time I was moving my mother out of her house and into a retirement-sized apartment. Box after box of things we didn’t know what to do with but that we couldn’t discard ended up at my place.
…They were sort of like large, cardboard marionettes. DANGEROUS cardboard marionettes….
In the dream, there were boxes everywhere. Plain brown corrugated cardboard boxes with no markings would appear in tall stacks, for instance up against walls, blocking doors, etc. This was one of those dreams where it feels like you’ve really woken up from another dream and now, you’re REALLY awake. So in the dream I was sitting in my bed, surrounded by stacks of boxes and I wondered if there were even boxes UNDERNEATH the bed. I was a little scared to look but then I told myself that it’s not like I was a kid and there were monsters or anything under the bed. Except that when I looked, there in fact WERE boxes under the bed and further they in fact WERE monsters. The lids of the boxes pushed back and inside were these monsters made of brown corrugated cardboard. They were sort of like large, cardboard marrionettes. DANGEROUS cardboard marrionettes. They had huge sharp teeth like triangles but the teeth actually WERE sharp, not like cardboard but more like box cutters. They started attacking me, biting at my feet and their bites drew blood. I tried to run but the doors were all blocked with stacks of boxes. Finally, I hid in the closet, all curled up. I could hear them just outside the door snapping their jaws. Weird, isn’t it?
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Nightmare #3 – Scrap Metal Monster
(Female, I was 4 or 5, this is my oldest nightmare) I had to go downstairs since my family was down there. Our basement was pretty bright for a basement, but the stairs were steep and, on one side, there was only half a wall since the staircase opened into the basement. Being small, I had to move to the other side of the stair to hang on to the rail because the open space was threatening.I had to go downstairs but I was afraid. I was the only one who seemed to know about the monster who lived there. He lived in the space above the acoustical tiles that we’d recently installed. He was obviously very light-weight and he didn’t seem to bother anyone else. When I went into the basement, however, he’d catch me. Then he would poke pieces of scrap metal into my ears and I’d wake up crying with an earache.